Guest Post: Another Example Of Why Central Planning Is A Bad Idea

I’ve noticed something strange over the past few weeks, maybe you have too. It seems that every ‘contrarian’ website out there has joined together to collectively bash the Olympics and anyone who tunes in to watch.

This seems nuts. Nobody should feel guilty for wanting to see athletes in peak condition push the boundaries of human performance. I certainly don’t feel guilty about it. In fact I came to the UK several days ago specifically to catch some of the Olympics live.

Unfortunately it turned out to be much more difficult than I had expected.

As it turns out, the British government has centrally planned Olympic ticket issuance in a way that’s so remarkably inefficient it would make Karl Marx look like Steve Jobs.

There’s only one way to buy London Olympic tickets– through the ’official’ office that’s controlled by the government. They’ve even solidified their monopoly by making it a CRIMINAL OFFENSE for individuals to resell Olympic tickets.

The concierge at my hotel, an affable Italian named Paulo, explained to me that the police even came around to warn (i.e. threaten) him against helping hotel guests find tickets.

Paulo directed me to the government’s official website so I could buy tickets the legal way. I quickly found out how Byzantine it is– there are all sorts of ridiculous hoops to jump through; if you’re a resident of the UK, you follow one procedure. If you’re a resident of the EU, you follow another. If you’re a resident of other countries, you follow yet another.

Then after creating an online profile and giving them all sorts of personal information, they’ll actually MAIL (i.e. snail mail) the physical tickets to the address you give them in your profile… and only to the address of your legal residency. It doesn’t matter if you’re traveling.

The alternative is that you could spend a couple of hours going to one of the ticket offices, all of which seem to have been strategically chosen for being in the most inconvenient locations possible.

Even if you can get through that maze, they’ve really screwed up their inventory management. Nobody seems to have any idea what tickets are available at any given time. An event may be ‘sold out’ at 10am, then have hundreds of seats available by noon.

The government’s central planning of Olympic ticketing has been a complete failure, perhaps best evidenced by the THOUSANDS of empty seats at many of the events.

Annoyed beyond belief, I asked the concierge at my hotel if there were any alternatives. He said, ‘maybe’, told me to write down my phone number, and wait.

Within a few minutes, my phone started ringing off the hook with calls from ticket brokers; since the government made it illegal for these guys to sell tickets, they’ve been pushed into dodgy underground boiler rooms for the past two weeks as if they’re Prohibition-era bootleggers trying to move a shipment of hooch.

Negotiating ticket prices with these guys, I couldn’t believe we were talking about a sporting event… it seemed more like an arms deal. One guy asked me three times if I was a cop, and another refused to give me his phone number when I said I needed to call him back.

Totally crazy. The government has managed to monopolize an entire industry and screw it up with Soviet-level inefficiency… then make it a criminal offense for the private sector to fix it.

This is typical of how a government operates. They take a very cavalier attitude because they don’t care about results, they only care about maintaining control. As a result, they run their operations based on the premise that people really have no choice.

With regard to Olympic ticketing, this is mostly true. My choice was either to go through the system legitimately (albeit painfully), deal with some dodgy backroom ticket broker at three times the price, or just watch it on television.

In our regular lives, though, we do have a choice. A single government need not have a monopoly over our lives.

As human beings, we are fundamentally free. We can choose where we live, where our money lives, where we pay taxes (and how much we pay), where to structure our companies, where to hire our employees, which regulations to adhere to, etc.

You can hold your savings in one country, store gold in another, own property in another, have legal tax residency in another, live in another, have a business in another, etc. This is what I call planting multiple flags… essentially using the system against itself.

And it is, by far, one of the most effective ways to take your freedom back and end your home government’s monopoly over your life.

There is no "central banking" either. It's organized crime. It's immoral. It's unlawful. Just like it was 70 years ago when the whitewashing, money laundering "central bankers" funded the Nazis. There is absolutely NO difference. Somewhere in the world, eventually people suffer because these "central planning" bankers commit fraud. Victims might be old people. They might be feeble people. They might be orphans. But they suffer unjustly and maybe even die for lack of food, care, shelter, clothing, or just plain depression. Because some crooked bank syndicate, using a benevolent sounding word like "central" or "united" or "world" or "international" with the help of the government, police, military and lawyers, stole their savings through confiscation, inflation, taxation or fraud. Just like they did before, with impunity.

To be fair, you can't expect a sold out stadium for trampoline quarter finals.

Most of the unfilled chairs were pre-allocated seats to olympic families and VIPs who didn't show up....and VIPs sholdn't resell their free tickets to make money. Sounds like RSVP system failed to work fast enough to switch out seats.

It is centrally preferring one segment over another without properly sizing the market that's gone wrong here.

"To be fair" ? Are you apologizing for these inept Socialist central planners ? Auction all tickets on Ebay .... give everyone a chance to bid .... legalize scalping and flower girls in the parking lot ! If you can't sell it .... you never owned it ! Huxley, you are a primordial ooze Socialist !

No, the USA loses billions of dollars by using important government functions as EEOC jobs programs and political correctness enforcement. By the same accounting methods, the entire 15T in debt Federal government is no different than the Post Office.

That line in bold is such bullshit and anyone who isnt devoid of intellect knows it.

when do you use your second amendment rights?

you have lived in tyranny for about 10 years now, guantanamo patriot act, endless bailouts?

why havent you stopped your tyranical government, the second ammendment hasnt done shit for you, your living in tyranny hiding behind an amendment saying "if things get bad we can stop it" newsflash dumbfuck things are already in tyranny and none of you have stopped a single thing.

Yep. I talked with my postman not long ago. The USPS barely covers its nut with junk mail delivery. 75% of it actually. The rest is short selling thier own service with "forever stamps...", which is ludicrous.

The post office is the MOST WELL funded retirement system in the world. That is the reason they operate at a loss every year. They pay over $5 billion into their retirement fund every single year as mandated by congress and the fund actually exists (until congress steals it at least) unlike the IOU's in the SS system. Check it out, don't take my word, you will see it is true...

'You can hold your savings in one country, store gold in another, own property in another, have legal tax residency in another, live in another, have a business in another, etc. This is what I call planting multiple flags… essentially using the system against itself.'

I almost thought he was going to actually write a coherent article for once, then I got to that ending.

The idea that prostrating yourself before as many governments as possible is to exercise MAXIMUM enslavement, rather than "using the system against itself."

I wonder, just who does he think he's harming with this tactic? Certainly not governments. All he does is stand in more sheeple lines than anyone I know.

Simply put, he's likely been exposed to more forms of their mental torture in the last five years than I have been in my entire life. Yet he does it willingly, all while bragging about how "free" it makes him.

The olympic clusterfuck is one of the BEST illustrations of the TOTAL FAILURE of central planning for the poor souls who cannot open a history book , look or talk to ex communist countries citizens or get informed about the realities of the world.

But of course, nobody will say anything and the sheeples will keep on worshipping the idiots in charge

Not to discount his clusterfuck experience, but it appears that the problem had nothing to do with public tickets he discusses, but rather the freebie tickets that were given to the beautiful people. I'm betting they ended up with multiple tickets to concurrent events (must have everything, right?), and they would just choose which one to go to without regard to the other tickets.

i got half way through this and thought, hmmm this post sounds oddly whiny, with a faint air of bragging, i immeadiatly clicked on that it was none other than the dos equis man himself simon black, i have been simoned again..

I wondered about those empty seats...with whole sections empty and others crowded it seems like the stupid Brits (gov't) are selling block by block, hence the "now we're sold out, now we're not," bit. What a waste. I guess I'm glad I didn't go...onecan see more on TV or online anyway.

You guy should try what I do. I scan the first dozen comments and decide from that if it is worth reading. MDB does ruin it for me though. You guys really got to stop encouraging him. But anyway, thanks for sparing me from another Simon Black ode-to-self....

Need ticket liquidity provided by HFT computers. Should be able to fill the seats with synthetic persons. Then create a secondary market off the books of leavered second traunch non existent ticket buyers ............

It is time you let us all in on the joke. Why do you post this stuff? Apart from the fact that it sounds like Mr Black sounds like a made up wanker, his solutions to what to do about what is going on make a farce or your work here. So, this has to be your idea of fun or something.

Central planning my ass. How do empty seats have anything to do with Simon Black's whining? All slots available to the public were sold despite the poor process for getting them. Empty seats were in blocks of seats reserved for corporate sponsors and sports federations. Apparently, Simon Black has never been to a sporting event in his life?????

Why, Tyler? Why with the lowbrow pandering to the knuckle draggers who think they understand Adam Smith.

Exactly like Amadeus said, the empty seats are in blocks reserved for certain groups. Also London 2012 tickets are session tickets (e.g. morning session) and quite often ticket holders don't stay for the whole session - for example if a morning session started with qualifying rounds early in the day, then semi-finals, a good proportion of ticket holders don't arrive until it's time for the semi-finals.

The reason it's generally been tough to buy London 2012 tickets at the last minute is that the public tickets for almost every event have been sold out because they are (understandably) very popular.

Other factual inaccuracies in Simon's piece.

The online ticket sales process is managed by the private sector (Ticketmaster, who also sell tickets to rock concerts and other large popular events), not by the UK government.

Ticket buyers didn't have to have tickets mailed to their home address, there was also a collection option. There is a ticket collection point at every Olympic venue in London - http://www.london2012.com/spectators/tickets/box-office/ - also Horseguards Parade and The Mall in central London so hardly 'out of the way locations'. Simon appears to be a dumb fucktard who can't read.

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It's really irritating to read this kind of crap written about what is turning out to be an extremely smoothly run and popular Olympic Games.

Why didn't the altruistic Socialist VIPs scalp their tickets or give them away ? The free market .... at the right price .... can fill a stadium to watch paint dry ! The athletes, the vendors .... deserved full stadiums .... it's a perfect example of fuckfastic spasmodic Socialism in action !

So the official government shill line for why the seats are always so empty looking is that they are SOLD OUT. If so many people don't stay around for the whole session, why can't you fucking resell your tickets?

Simon Black. The only pseudonymous pseudoblogger who thinks he's going to 'buy' an Olympic ticket during the event - probably because he's 'American' and thinks 'he's' owed special treatment as a result of an accident of birth. Just about all of the Americans (not the ersatz ones like 'Black') that I have met during MY life, have been upstanding credits to their nation and great guys and gals to have a laugh and a drink with.

'Black' is a whiney little pussy who probably has a bad complexion, is an overweight dweeb, doing all of his "research" on Mommy's old MacBook in her basement. The utter boners that he experiences (such as crossing between Italia and Switzerland last month) within his faultily researched Schengen Zone bitches, are to laugh at - if they weren't so pathetic. And today the pattern continues.

When setting up the ticketing process, the UK government and the olympic committee wanted to avoid the "empty seat syndrome" (which was far worse in Seoul) but had to provide for the three "classes" of nationalities that 'Black' correctly identifies on as equitable a basis as possible.

To adopt a Free-Market approach would have been idealogically wonderful -- and would have failed miserably as all the bucket shops and touts monopolised the distribution and charged TEN TIMES face for a ticket.

So quit yer bitchin' "Black", jump into the TARDIS lurking in the corner of Mommy's basement, and go back to last year - whick is when you should have bought your ticket through the ballot process (which you conveniently didn't mention)

Incidentally, these 'photos' of 'empty seats' could have easily been taken between sessions either as seats were vacated or being occupied for the next session. Pretty much all of the TV coverage (at all times - morning afternoon and especially evening) have shown VERY impressive crowds at ALL venues and in the streets too. And THAT on different nation's feeds of different events at the same time. If anything should be said about London 2012 it's that it is a resounding success on all fronts and has set a new standard for subsequent olympiads.

Apart from 'Black' there's been a quite uncharacteristic lot of "Olympic Bashing" from many US posters at ZH. What the FUCK is wrong with you people?

Are you such spineless fucktards that you can't bear someone else having a bit of success at an event that is intended to unite humanity in peaceful sporting excellence even if that is a difficult concept for you to wrap your bitchiness around? Or has the ZHeeple degenerated into a self-congratulatory bunch of (equally spineless) backbiters that just have HATE and denigration as their collective driving force?

Or are you ready to add to your medal tally by getting Gold for Bankster Lynching?

Not to jump to Simon's defense, but if most of the American's you've met in your life have been upstanding credits to their nation, then you must not be American, must not have known many Americans (maybe just the Mormon missionaries on occasion?) and have never EVER been to a WalMart.

Most Americans I've met have been the type that wondered what was wrong with Ms. Ms. Teen South Carolina that everyone was making such a fuss about. So go back to your seat on the IOC and say hi to all the non-fat ass, non-moron-level intellect Americans you meet in your journeys.

The tide is turning. Centralization has proven itself deadly. You will see decentralization on an unprecedented scale once the MASS ARRESTS occur, the FED is dissolved, real money returns, and the Constitution is restored... http://tinyurl.com/cd5cyjo/

Again with the capitalized mass arrests. Tell me, does it ever just hurt your head to be you? Does saying this optimistic, pie in the sky bull make you sleep batter at night? Who exactly are you trying to convince? I'd seriously like to know. Because if it is as you assert - that all of this great stuff will magically happen for no reason - why do you need to keep convincing us? Huh? <Jeopardy music plays>

Germany tried something similar with the World Cup in 2006 but economic sense prevailed as professional US scalpers flew in from as far away as LA to sort it out. But with football there would have been riots if the stadiums had had empty seats. The blocks of empty seats really do seems to reflect corporate purchases and waste. What a shame, these events live really do create a shared Euopean experience. Showing such contempt for the atheletes and the local familes who would like to attend is such a crude display of power. They would have done better to send everyone in England four tickets by lottery and let Brit ingenuity and the internet sort it out. They average housewife in Cardiff would have done as well as anyone at screening out riffraff before she sold her diving or dressage passes.

They turn over $50 pa so that's the size of his business. Anyway, he tells me that his American 'partners' have been incredibly unprofessional and failed to recognise important practical difficulties. Instead prefering to enjoin him to,"C'mon...get with the Olympic spirit!!" Honest. That's what I am told.

No one needs another article explaining that State provision will always fail (with respect to this writer). It could be that we need an explanation for why American firms think that something called 'the Olympic spirit' will provide enough qualified fork lift drivers in time........